The NFL Didn't Even Look At The Ray Rice Elevator Video Before Deciding His Punishment

Eric Goldschein

11:29 am, August 4th, 2014

[UPDATE: A previous version of this post referred to the NFL having not seen the TMZ video of Rice and his fiancee. Please note that it refers to the video of the incident inside the elevator.]

The NFL has received a lot of well-deserved shit for their complete botching of the Ray Rice situation, from the punishment itself to the their subsequent attempts at justification. Expect the groundswell of criticism to grow when people find out the league didn’t watch the video of Rice hitting his then-fiancee in an Atlantic City elevator before rendering a decision.

Because authorities didn’t show it to them, the league made their decision to suspend Rice without reviewing all of the evidence.

Perhaps this is why the NFL seems genuinely confused about why they’ve gotten such a negative reaction regarding the suspension. They really might not know how brutal and devastating the attack was — although anyone who watched the TMZ video alone knows that two games is a joke.

Originally, we thought they hadn’t even looked at the TMZ video, which seemed insane. But now that we know that the NFL was presented with all the same facts as the public — i.e., they didn’t have access to the in-elevator video — it’s almost more frustrating. How could the league be so tone deaf to something we regular folks understand to be a heinous crime?

It’s more obvious than ever that the NFL operates and makes decisions in a vacuum.